No. Or rather, I should say that this is never mentioned in the text. My basic assumption is that "being many places at once" is a property relevant to being an oracle, and the Holtzmann engines, which employ science no one really understands, tap into the same structure in the universe that the oracle does when he can see the future or other places. The term "folding space" is a shorthand for having two distinct places meet as if adjacent to each other, but in terms of what's physically happening the story doesn't say. But none of what we understand would go into wormhole travel is mentioned in the story, so I'm fairly confident to say that is not what's happening. They're doing something else here, and I suspect it's a thing not currently present in current scientific theory (even as a wild notion).

I don't think that Herbert said anything clearly about wormholes at all. The term "wormhole" implies to me an area that is outside of normal space, where the rules of physics are different, or a conduit from one area of space to another where the rules are different.

But the term "folding space" implies to me that they never leave normal space, and instead use something else, like an artificial gravity well, that curves space artificially (just as a sun, or a black hole do) to make the traveling distance in normal space from one point to another lesser. So, rules of speed and velocity are the same, you just do not have to go as far.

None of this comes from the book though. More from being a SF-geek. Is there anything in the text I am forgetting about distrans?

Actually, isn't there something about "motionless movement" or something like that? Can't recall if that is from the books, or just what I got from the movie. But if from the books it may be that they are bending space to such a degree that two points separated by vast distances are placed right next to each other by bending space around them, so no thrusting engine is needed.

Pretty sure there is some thread around here where I used the classy image of a boogar on a piece of paper to illustrate the concept.

the spiritual nature of the powers that navigators possessed and which paul and alia and leto surpassed to me didn't translate into an ability to transcend physicality. there were simply aids in directing motion more suscessfully

and having a hand on more of its controls than most mortals

ive always like the pictures of ships simply shimmering out of existanceas if once a passage was established it took no more access them than to let the electrons in orbit of your physical existance swing around the longside of their orbits and boom your there

always thought the emporer asking how navigators journey from IX had been was odd...

distrans wrote:no Omphalosthe spiritual nature of the powers that navigators possessed and which paul and alia and leto surpassed to me didn't translate into an ability to transcend physicality.

Do you mean "transcend spatial distance"? Because I don't think anything in the story transcends physicality in the sense of being literally removed from physical reality. But actually we do know that the power of the oracle transcends physical distance because they can instantly "see" things very far away with no time delay, including things in the future and past.

there were simply aids in directing motion more suscessfully

To follow up on my first point, it can't just be this, because what the Holtzmann engine does with a physical ship seems to me to be roughly the same thing the mind of an oracle can do with information. In other words, the oracle's mind is an informational-Holtzmann engine; or perhaps it would be more accurate to say a Holtzmann engine is a crude version of what the oracle can potentially do. There is some differentiation, since we never see an oracle teleport objects, but as I see it in both cases we're talking about transmission of information instantly across massive distances. Whether the engines can theoretically also travel through time I don't know. I believe that the Destination: Void books employ the same physics as Dan Simmons' Hyperion series, and in that series such a person absolutely can will themselves through space and time, so if I'm going to extrapolate I might surmise that the same would be true in the Dune universe, except that no one's learned how to do so yet. This is already at the point of speculation to the power of three, so I understand that I'm just throwing out ideas.

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distrans wrote:what I meant was that prescience didn't ever move an atom in spaceits power was thought alone

I think this is incorrect, though. Paul makes it pretty explicit (in Messiah, maybe?) that mentats incorrectly think they can analyze systems in the universe from afar, without including themselves in the equation. In other words, their analysis involves them being merely an observer and not involved in the calculation. Paul knows this is a faulty way of seeing reality because (and here Frank invokes quantum mechanics) any observation already changes that which is observed. There is literally no such thing as seeing through thought alone and 'not changing an atom'. I think one of the crucial points the Dune series tries to make is that thought alone changes a great deal in the universe, and perhaps is the most important thing. The oracle knows that even the manner in which they look into the future can affect the future greatly. In order to make the real calculation - as opposed to the limited way mentats do - one must understand the power of the observation and calculation itself as changing the situation. It's a subtle point because you could turn around and ask me where we see an oracle employ telekinesis, and of course we don't that I know of, but it would be wrong to conclude from that that thought alone doesn't change anything.

never thought of the engines as at all aproximating the ability of the prescienct

I think they both work based on the same principle, but they're different actions, obviously. And as evidence of this Duncan concludes in Chapterhouse that whoever is doing what M&D are doing must have found new solutions for Holtzmann's equations. And what is it they're doing? Locating ships with no-fields and communicating across vast distances using their minds. Even Duncan is able to briefly perceive the net using his mind, and so I have no doubt that Dune 7 was going to tie in human mental powers with the Holtzmann drive and explain how what we've seen so far were both special cases of a more general principle that he was going to reveal.

Freakzilla wrote:

distrans wrote:always took it that the engines afford the means to travel as such but it took the prescient to be able to steer them suscessfully enough to become reliable rather than gambits

Exactly, the Holtzman engines "folded space" or whatever, the prescient or later the INM was only needed to plot the safe course (or destination) and pull the trigger.

Right, different implementations, but both having in common the fact of connecting large distances instantly. "He who can be many places at once" surely resonates with a star drive that literally connects different places at once, no? I can't see that as being a coincidence. I think the general point Frank was leading to is that distance isn't what we think it is, and there are different types of 'technology', whether that's an engine or the human mind, that can circumvent our limited understand of what space and time are.

Sorry if it got too much into fru-fru-land Omph. I think there's a lot of detailing in the books that Frank meant very intentionally and wasn't just random sci-fi technobabble, so I enjoy trying to figure out what he was getting it. Doesn't mean I'm right.

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Freakzilla wrote:He thought: Time is a measure of space, just as a range finder is a measure of space, butmeasuring locks us into the place we measure.~Children of Dune

Yeah, that certainly supports your old theory that oracles can see into both future and past equally. An interesting corollary of this particular passage is that people who mentally limit themselves to measurements right in front of them - in other words are mentally stuck based on only what they see right in front of them - are likewise locked into that limited place. The effects of their thought and understanding will be very local, and in a strict sense they interaction with the universe will be quite limited. Whereas for someone conducting measurements on a large scale of space will likewise we less locked into any particular place (or time) and will be able to integrate more of the universe into their calculations and actions. So for all the people who don't believe in 'spooky action at a distance' I guess the quote here would suggest that that's true for them, because they lock themselves into a very small sphere of awareness, but for people like Leto II who open up their awareness to much greater distances they are likewise 'really present' in some sense in all of the space/time. I'm reminded of that scene in Dune where Alia appears in the OM of Mohiam, which is really only explicable if we consider that as an oracle she was literally inhabiting the past as well as the present in more than just an 'observer' kind of way.

Presently Leto sat up, saw that only Namri remained, watching.In an old voice, Leto said: "There's no single set of limits for all men. Universal prescienceis an empty myth. Only the most powerful local currents of Time may be foretold. But in aninfinite universe, local can be so gigantic that your mind shrinks from it."~Children of Dune

It's not a theory, the text plainly backs up trinocular past-present-future Vision. If I wasn't so drunk and tired I'd look up quotes...

See CoD

Paul of Dune was so bad it gave me a seizure that dislocated both of my shoulders and prolapsed my anus.~Pink Snowman

It will happen! he thought.But the thought was distant and came as though it were not his own, not really his own; nomore than his skin.The vision absorbed him. It evolved into a stereologic memory which separated past andpresent, future and present, future and past. Each separation mingled into a trinocular focuswhich he sensed as the multidimensional relief map of his own future existence.

Paul of Dune was so bad it gave me a seizure that dislocated both of my shoulders and prolapsed my anus.~Pink Snowman

I guess my post maybe made it sound like I doubted your point. In fact I think I agree with you, I only called it 'your theory' because you were the person I recall speaking about that a few years ago. It was more a reference to who made the claim originally rather than a statement of what I think of it. The only mitigating factor in the various books about exactly how the trinocular focus works in practice is that we hear about oracles having visions of the future but for some reason Frank doesn't seem to include them having visions of the past as far as I recall. Even Leto II takes safaris into other memory rather than just using his prescience to look into the past. You'd think the problem of keeping the ancestors at bay would be solved by simply avoiding dealing with them at all and using prescience instead.

Many years ago my running theory was that the reason Paul and Leto II could see into past and future was that their powers were a simple blend of the abilities of the mentat, the RM, and the Guild; using OM for seeing the past, Guild-style prescience for seeing the future, and mentat abilities to process it all, making the person a 'super-mentat' as the Dune appendix calls it. I'm still not sure this isn't what Frank originally intended in Dune, but it may have evolved as he wrote books 2 & 3. Thematically it makes sense to me to think of the KH as being what happens when you achieve a balance between the masculine and the feminine; the giver and the taker. I think I tend to believe at this point that maybe CoD was the point where he refined a lot of his ideas that were only hinted at in Dune, or even soft-retconned certain facts such as whether the BG could go back to using old drugs (like the Rossak drug) for their powers if they wanted to wean a future generation off spice.